Welcome back to the "LWH ‘Insider’ Tips"! This time, the so-called "tips" will cover friends, followers, and pesky points.

You may have noticed in your profile(not account summary, information update, etc., but the page that is brought up when you click on your username in the upper right corner) there is a section that lists how many friends, followers, following, and clubs you have/are in, plus above there is how many points you have, your level, and your rank. Following, is, as the name suggests, users who you have followed, this is done by going in their profile and clicking on the follow button. Followers are users who are following you. Friends are users who you follow and follow you. Points, level, rank. What a hot topic! However, we are not going to get into that right now, I’ll merely explain what they are. Users obtain points of certain amount based on specific activities they perform, such as publishing a new blog or collection, following a user, etc., or things that happen to them, such as another user following them, commenting on their blog, etc. Your level is based on how many points you have, for instance, you reach level five at 10,000 points. Your rank is based on how many points you have in comparison to the other users. With the basic definitions out of the way, let’s proceed to the tips regarding these aspects of the ANA website(Again, please remember, the numbers aside the tips do not denote any form of rank of the tips).

1). Only follow active users

If your following someone, it generally is because you either enjoy their blog/collections, or participated with them on a forum. Or, perhaps it is because you want to message them(which is possible when you are ‘friends’ with a user). Any of those reasons mean that in order to enjoy your following of someone, and obtain the end you desired from following them, they have to be active users. How to check this? Either by observing whether they have published a blog/collection or participated on a forum recently, or checking their ‘activity’ section in their profile. Following users is a great way to enjoy the ANA website community, just ensure you don’t follow "dead" users.

2). Don’t follow people you don’t want too

There are over 16,000 users on the ANA website, as of the writing of this blog. There is no reason to follow someone unless you want to follow them; it is nothing but a waste of time. This is rather brief, but I felt it had to be said.

3). Avoid the temptation

Ahh, the pesky points. Numerous blogs, comments, messages, and forums have condemned them. However, at the moment they are not going away. Resist the temptation! Don’t try to increase your rank, level, or point total, simply to increase them. There is no benefit to trying to increase them. No, I don’t mean don’t do anything that involves them, I merely mean don’t see them as a reason for doing something. Otherwise, very easily you will end up like numerous, who will be unnamed, users who have thousands of points, and yet do little more than follow thousands, literally thousands, of other users. Doing the activity is fine, just don’t do it because of points, and don’t get caught up in the point game.

This concludes the "LWH ‘Insider’ Tips" on friends, followers, and pesky points. Liked it? Keep your eye out for more tip blogs regarding the ANA website. Didn’t like it? Have mercy in the comments. Please.